Volume 14: Devastation Chapter 646: Fifth Seat: Ke Lan
This was Ke Lan's first time entering the "central core area" of the Ark.
Judging from the number of mechanisms and the strength of the defense, this place is no less than the core area of any S-level ruins.
Not to mention ordinary Ark residents, even senior officers of the garrison, heads of major financial groups, and even members of the United Parliamentary Group are prohibited from entering the central core area without permission.
Ark told the public that the central core area houses a large number of precision equipment related to the daily operation of the Ark. In order to ensure that it will not be damaged by people with ulterior motives, the entire central core area must remain "unmanned" at all times, and all cleaning and maintenance work is completed by mechanical units directly controlled by the core brain.
Under the guidance of the mechanical servant, Ke Lan passed through a corridor that was a hundred meters long and made of obsidian, and a door carved entirely of black crystal appeared in front of him.
This door seemed to be made of a whole piece of black crystal, rather than being pieced together from small pieces of material. At least, there were no traces of splicing on its surface.
"How luxurious..." Ke Lan whispered, with a tone that was half sighing and half sarcastic.
"This door comes from an A-class relic, and it can withstand direct bombardment from a cruiser's plasma main gun." Demeter's voice came from the crack in the door. "Now that you're here, don't stand at the door. Come in."
The mechanical servants stepped aside - Ke Lan quickly understood what they meant: except for the members of the Undead Crew, no other person or machine was qualified to push open this door.
He sneered in his heart. To put it nicely, this was a full sense of ritual. To put it bluntly, it was formalism... He didn't expect that the undead crew would be so pedantic over such trivial matters.
This is probably the commonality of the ruling class...
Ke Lan exhaled slowly, reached out and pushed open the cold, heavy door.
At the back was a room as big as a football field. In the middle of the room was a long table with twenty-four chairs on it - it was very different from the round table that Ke Lan had seen in the Bronze City Tower. The chairs were not wooden carved Gothic high-back chairs, but heavy metal chairs that looked mechanical.
Most of the chairs were "sitting" with a dark blue holographic projection, with only three chairs empty - the "Fool" at the first seat, the "Pope" at the fifth seat, and the "Devil" at the fifteenth seat.
"Find your seat, and then take a seat." The person who spoke was Poseidon, who was sitting at the sixteenth seat in the "Tower". The seat next to him was empty, and there was a devil pattern engraved on the back of the chair.
This voice was the old male voice that appeared in the previous call. Ke Lan nodded slightly at his projection, found the fifth seat of "Pope", and sat down.
On his left hand side was the fourth seat, "King" Zeus. The holographic projection was of a bearded man wearing a crown. He leaned against the back of his chair with his eyes closed and resting - using a holographic projection to pose in this way, he didn't even want to look at Ke Lan. Ke Lan immediately understood that his neighbor probably didn't like him as a newcomer, and he probably voted against the resolution for him to join the Undead Crew.
On the other side was a young woman with delicate features and a pretty smile. Her appearance combined almost all the characteristics of beauties from the East and the West. Her facial features had both the delicacy unique to Oriental women and the three-dimensionality of Western white people. Her amorous peach blossom eyes were looking at Ke Lan with a smile - even Ke Lan, who thought he was extremely immune to beauties, couldn't help but feel a strange feeling in his heart when he saw this face.
This is just a blue translucent holographic projection. If it were a real person or a realistic CG picture, the visual impact would probably be even greater.
Undead Crew, Sixth Seat, "The Lover", Aphrodite.
Just as Ke Lan's gaze moved to the other members of the crew, the chair behind him suddenly made a crisp mechanical sound, and then a set of restraints similar to torture instruments were put on his hands and feet.
"Don't be nervous. This is one of the necessary procedures for the meeting. We need to scan your body information and record it." Demeter explained to Ke Lan.
A small device suspended in the air slowly floated in front of Ke Lan. A red light shot out from the lens on the front of the device, sweeping Ke Lan from head to toe, and then once again disappeared into the shadows.
The restraints on Ke Lan were also released and retracted into the chair.
"Although we have already voted, we still need you to confirm it again." Demeter said, "Whether you will accept Ke Lan to join us and become the fifth member of the Undead Crew - the new 'Pope'."
One after another, beams of light lit up in front of these projections, green representing approval and red representing opposition. Ke Lan noticed that there was also a green light on in the empty fifteenth seat.
This was the result of the previous vote... Ke Lan looked around, and as expected, there was a red light on his left and a green light on his right... As for the "Queen" Demeter, the "Tower" Poseidon, the "Justice" Themis and the "World" Hermaphroditus, the four members of the Undead Crew Club who had had interactions with Ke Lan before, all voted in favor.
"The Fool abstained from voting, the Pope was absent, and the Tower was the one who proposed this resolution, so his vote in favor does not count. The remaining votes total 19, 12 in favor and 7 against... So, congratulations -" Demeter looked at Ke Lan, "Now you are one of us."
"Do you need me to give a thank-you speech?" Ke Lan made a joke.
"No need," Demeter said. "Now, let's start the vote on another proposal - 'Disclose all true information of members to each other within the crew association.'"
This was not the first time the crew had voted on this resolution, and the red and green beams of light appeared in front of everyone again. However, what surprised Ke Lan was that Aphrodite, her "lover" who had just voted in favor, voted against it this time.
Just as Poseidon had said to Ke Lan on the phone before, the red and green colors accounted for exactly half of the eighteen beams of light, nine to nine.
Apart from the abstention of the "Fool" in the zeroth seat and the death of the "Devil" in the fifteenth seat, Ke Lan was the only one who had not cast a vote.
Ke Lan glanced around the room. The nine people who voted in favor were the third seat "Queen" Demeter, the seventh seat "Chariot" Ares, the eighth seat "Strength" Hercules, the tenth seat "Wheel of Fortune" the three goddesses of fate, the eleventh seat "Justice" Mites, the twelfth seat "Hanged Man" Prometheus, the thirteenth seat "God of Death" Hades, the seventeenth seat "Star" Pandora and the twenty-first seat "World" Hermaphroditus.
The sixteenth seat, "Tower" Poseidon, also voted in favor, but as the proposer of the resolution, his vote was not counted.
Those who voted against were the "Magician" Hermes in the first seat, the "Priestess" Persephone in the second seat, the "King" Zeus in the fourth seat, the "Lover" Aphrodite in the sixth seat, the "Hermit" Kronos in the ninth seat, the "Temperance" Iris in the fourteenth seat, the "Moon" Artemis in the eighteenth seat, the "Sun" Apollo in the nineteenth seat and the "Judgement" Osiris in the twentieth seat.
In Ke Lan's mind, he naturally divided the members of the Undead Crew into two camps based on the voting results.
"There is one vote left, the fifth seat, 'Pope.'" Demeter looked at Ke Lan.
Not only her, but all the members of the Undead Crew present focused their attention on Ke Lan.
His is the most crucial vote, the one that decides the outcome.
"I agree with this proposal." As soon as the words fell, a green light rose in front of Ke Lan.
This was basically an outcome without suspense. Regardless of whether they voted in favor or against, they all knew what Ke Lan's choice would be... Perhaps because of this, most of the people in the opposition camp looked at Ke Lan with a rather... cold gaze.
"Then the result is out--" Demeter stopped talking halfway, and a rare look of horror appeared on her elegant face.
At some point, a red light representing "opposition" lit up in front of the seat of "The Fool", the zeroth seat.
The final voting result was ten votes to ten, and the proposal was invalid.
"This is impossible." The look of horror on Demeter's face flashed away, and she frowned and shook her head stiffly.
"How is it impossible?" Ke Lan muttered softly. Although the "Fool" in seat zero had always chosen to "abstain from voting", it did not mean that he had completely given up the right to vote. It was not surprising that he jumped out at this time to equalize the number of votes again.
However, this only further verified Ke Lan's guess - before returning to the Ark, Ke Lan had linked the person pretending to be an intelligence dealer with the Zeroth Seat "The Fool". Now that the "Fool" has taken the initiative to cast a vote against it, perhaps it was to keep the secret?
But Ke Lan soon discovered that, except for Demeter, the expressions on the faces of the other undead crew members - no matter which camp they were from - were somewhat strange.
"You don't know, 'The Fool'... has not attended the internal meeting of the crew for a long time." Demeter said.
"When was the last time The Fool participated in a vote?" Ke Lan couldn't help but ask.
"Seventy-one years ago...at the internal discussion meeting where the Ark decided to descend to Alpha." Poseidon murmured.
"You can also understand that he has been silent for seventy-one years... or, in other words, he has been sleeping for seventy-one years." Demeter whispered.
"Is it possible that he has been missing for seventy-one years... or that he has already died?" Ke Lan narrowed his eyes. "The person who voted against it now is not the 'Fool' you know?"
"No, The Fool is not dead." This time, it was the second Priestess Persephone who spoke. "If the life signal of The Fool disappears, the core brain of the Ark will instantly enter a locked state. The remaining 21 crew members must issue commands at the same time to restart it."
"Then is it possible that this voting device has been tampered with?" Ke Lan asked again, "Even Pan could be poisoned to death without anyone noticing, so it shouldn't be difficult to modify a voting device, right?"
"Absolutely impossible." Demeter shook her head. She then looked at the empty chief seat behind the red light and asked in a deep voice, "You...are awake?"
No one answered.
There was only a red light floating in front of the seat, like a candlelight in the darkness.
"Now that things have come to this, I think there is nothing more to say." The 19th seat "Sun" Apollo said, "I have something else to do, so I'm sorry I can't keep you company."
After saying this, his holographic projection suddenly went out.
As Apollo left, the members of the opposition also disappeared from the table one by one, leaving only Persephone who remained there, looking at Demeter and Poseidon with a smile: "If we were to say who of us has more secrets, it would be The Fool, right? To be honest, I'm not surprised that he would make such a choice."
With that, her holographic image also disappeared.
"It's really a Cheng Yaojin who showed up unexpectedly." Ke Lan said, "But to be honest, I think what the 'priestess' said is absolutely right... This guy must have more secrets than anyone else here, maybe even more than all of you put together. It's like someone proposed to nationalize the private property of all citizens. Then I would be a poor pauper, and everyone here can probably be considered middle class with houses and cars... and this guy should be the richest man in the world."
“…”
"Perhaps, next time you should add a clause in the proposal, 'Share the real information of everyone except the zeroth seat'. I think he might not vote against it." Ke Lan said again.
"There's no point in arguing about this now." Demeter shook her head. "As a new member of the crew, you have an important task to take charge of."
"What job?"
"Disaster relief and reconstruction of the damaged areas of the Ark." Demeter said.
"You're going to leave such a big thing to a newcomer like me? Can you trust me?" Ke Lan was a little surprised.
"You are the only member of the Crew Guild among us who can appear in public in your true form. It will be much easier for you to handle many things. Don't worry, the United Parliament and the military will fully cooperate with your work. In addition, if you need to use the resources of the Crew Guild, you can contact me or Poseidon at any time." Demeter said.
"Why do I feel like there's no difference between me now and before after being hired as a full-time employee? To put it bluntly, I'm still just a lousy worker." Ke Lan complained.
"No, you can choose to refuse." Demeter said, "If you don't want to take this job, we will select someone else... In addition, you have the same authority as us. You don't need anyone's approval to use these authorities."
"If I want to shoot a few congressmen, can I?"
"Can."
